What She Wants

Nicole gave him a wry look and headed for the door.

‘I’ve got people interested in you, you stupid little black bitch,’ he shouted.

That did it. He’d been fine until he’d called her that. How dare he? She was proud of her Indian heritage and her colour, not that she knew much about India really, but she was proud of it anyway. Rage coursing in every vein, Nicole whirled round. She wanted to hit him but pride stopped her. He could behave like scum from the gutter but she wouldn’t.

‘When I’m famous, Dickie, I hope you’ll remember that you could have been a part of it.’ She gazed at him superciliously. ‘Except you got too greedy. And I will be famous, I promise you.’ With that, she left, her long silky hair flying as she strode out of the building.

She would be famous. She knew it in her bones. Dickie had done one good thing for her: he’d shown her that she wanted to make it as a singer. She’d been hiding from it for years but he’d helped her see that she could do it – and that she wanted to. She owed him that. Maybe she’d send him a ticket for her first gig.

Sharon was furious. ‘The scumbag,’ she raged. ‘I knew he was trouble. I’ll go round and kill him meself. No, I’ll get my brother to do it.’

‘Don’t waste your time,’ Nicole said. ‘No, what I need you to do is help me with some research. I need to make a demo tape and I want to know where I can do it cheaply. Secondly, I’ve got to find out who to send it to. Put your thinking cap on, Shazz. Between the pair of us, we must know somebody who can help.’

Sharon’s second cousin’s flatmate knew a studio engineer who wouldn’t mind a bit of moonlighting as a one-off. He knew who to send demos to but warned Sharon that record companies got zillions of tapes every year. ‘They probably file them in the black plastic filing cabinet,’ he said.

Nicole shrugged. ‘I’ll take that chance.’

The cheapest studio time for recording sessions was in the middle of the night, so at two a.m. two weeks later, Nicole, Sharon and Sharon’s second cousin, Elaine, lined up in Si-borg Studios. The engineer had drummed up four musicians to play along with her and, to hide her nerves, Nicole whispered to Sharon that the musicians mustn’t be much good if they were prepared to play in the middle of the night for damn all money. The money was from Nicole’s building society account and she still felt anxious every time she thought of spending it on something so ephemeral.

‘Shut up,’ hissed Tommy, the engineer, ‘or they’ll all go home. They’re not that desperate.’

Embarrassed, Nicole lit up. Nobody looked askance at her. At Si-borg, it was the people who didn’t smoke who looked out of place. The musicians, engineer and even the receptionist all puffed madly so the entire premises was fuggy with smoke and the walls were stained a cloudy vanilla thanks to years of late-night Marlboro sessions.

The first hour was hell for Nicole. Used to launching into a song as soon as the karaoke machine played it or singing her own compositions alone in her bedroom, she found it impossible to stop and start as the real musicians warmed up by snapping strings, getting riffs wrong and grumbling about unfamiliar songs.

‘What’s wrong with them?’ she whispered to Tommy as they took a break, mindful of keeping her voice down in case the musicians walked out.

‘Whitney Houston and Sade are not their thing,’ he grinned. ‘If you wanted to launch into something by the Manic Street Preachers, these would be your men.’

‘Charming.’ Nicole stomped off to the loo. She leaned her head against the mirror and closed her eyes wearily. This wasn’t working out as planned. She’d taken Tommy’s advice and had gone for covering other people’s songs instead of her own ones because he said her voice was the main thing and the demo would have greater impact that way.

She’d been so excited at the thought of working with real musicians and had had visions of herself belting out flawless hit after hit with everyone in the studio watching her in admiration.

Instead, all she had was a sore throat from the combination of singing and smoking too much, and she really wished she hadn’t worn those ultra tight pink snakeskin jeans and high-heeled boots. She felt bloated because she was pre-menstrual and the waistband of the jeans was cutting into her flesh like cheese wire. Why was she doing this? She must have been mad. Just because she could hold a note didn’t make her Mariah Carey. Would it be awful if she told them all to go home because she couldn’t keep going?

‘Nicole!’ said Sharon, dancing into the grimy loo clutching a can of beer and a roll-up that Nicole would swear was filled with more than just tobacco. ‘Isn’t it exciting? God, they love you. I just overheard the bass player telling Tommy that you had a fantastic voice and wondering if you needed a band?’

Nicole stood up straight and blinked tiredly. The harsh fluorescent light hurt her eyes: they were red-rimmed with tiredness, no matter how much kohl she’d painted around them.

‘They said what?’

‘That you’re marvellous! That you’ve got “star quality”,’ Sharon said happily. ‘Well, I could have told them that but it’s good that they think so, don’t you think?’ She prattled away about the bass player and how he’d said that Nicole was ‘mega’.

Nicole half listened and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Underneath the tired face and the weary eyes, there was a certain radiance. She smiled and the radiance shone out at her, bypassing the tiredness instantly. Star quality, huh?

‘Have you got any of that bright red lipstick on you, Sharon?’ she asked. ‘I left my bag downstairs and I look like death warmed up.’

Sharon rummaged around in a handbag the size of Santa’s toy sack and found the lipstick in question.

With a slightly shaking hand, Nicole applied a thick buttery layer. On her dark little face with her eyes glowing like jet, the rich crimson looked incredible. Sexy and mysterious at the same time. Nicole pouted theatrically at herself. ‘Let’s go get ‘em,’ she said with a huge grin.

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_822235d6-1afc-505f-be2e-2d0f80b7f23e)

Millie’s roars could be heard in three counties at least.

‘Don’t want to be in the car!’ she bellowed, her small face screwed up with anger and rage.

‘Neither do I,’ muttered Hope tight-lipped as she negotiated the hire car along the winding road, oblivious to the wind and rain swept scenery they were passing by. When the plane had banked before it arrived in Kerry’s airport, Hope had done her best to peer out the window and see what sort of fabled, emerald isle she was landing on, but Toby had chosen that moment to grizzle miserably at the jerking motion of the aircraft, so she’d dragged her eyes away from the slightly bleak looking patchwork fields and comforted him. Now the rain was lashing down, giving the whole place a dismal air that was at odds with Matt’s description of it.

‘I remember sitting with Gearóid on the steps in the sun, him with a bottle of Guinness, the sound of the bees droning around us and the smell of hay being cut in the fields nearby. Everything was rich greens and soft golds…’

They must both have been drinking Guinness, Hope reflected, because there was nothing sunny or golden about the modern version of Kerry, even allowing for the fact that it was a blisteringly cold November day. Any bees buzzing around would have been drowned in the downpour.

This was not what she’d hoped for. Definitely not.

‘It’s going to be fabulous,’ Dan had said enthusiastically at the Parkers’ leaving do in the Three Carpenters two days before Matt’s departure. ‘The way Matt has described Ireland to me makes it sound magical.’

‘We all envy you so much,’ said a swaying Betsey, who’d come from a publicity launch in London for a new perfume and was half-plastered on free champagne, not to mention reeking of free scent. ‘You’ll have a blast.’

Hope, still exhausted from the stress of packing up the house and the misery of having to hand in her notice in the building society, sincerely hoped she would, although she felt that a week in a health farm was probably what she needed to relax her.

‘You will keep in touch, won’t you?’ begged Yvonne, who was unexpectedly tearful at the thought of Hope leaving. ‘I’ll miss you, you know.’

Hope hugged her. ‘ ‘Course I will. I’ll be back in no time at all. And you can come and visit us. Matt tells me it’s a beautiful place.’

He’d talked longingly of sitting on the coast on the Beara Peninsula looking over the rugged Atlantic, listening to the sound of the curlews as you created perfect prose. And he’d told her how Redlion nestled in a valley that protected it from the cruel winds that blew in off the sea. ‘Idyllic’ had been his word for it.

It didn’t seem very idyllic at the moment, though. Hope began to think that the original idea of Matt driving her Metro via the ferry to Ireland ten days earlier to get the cottage shipshape hadn’t been such a good idea. Travelling with the children was always a nightmare and she could have done with some help. It would also have been nice to have some reassurance that it didn’t rain all the time and that this downpour was unusual she hoped.

But Matt had insisted that someone had to do some work on the cottage because the lawyer had mentioned it was a bit ‘uncared for.’ And he’d also been keen to meet the artistic community people he’d been corresponding with, in relation to working in their centre, as soon as possible.

Hope tried to concentrate on the road, which wasn’t easy with Millie yelling. Their progress since landing had been slow to say the least. Just when Hope was panicking about being stranded without their luggage, her five suitcases had finally turned up. Battling through the small but incredibly crowded airport with two fractious children, she’d picked up the sturdy four-wheel drive vehicle she’d booked in advance and had just managed to hump all their cases into it without giving herself a hernia when Millie decided to throw a tantrum.

A visit to the ladies, bribery involving biscuits and juice, and the purchase of a cuddly bear in an Aran sweater had all been useless. Millie had decided she was not in a good mood, wailing so hysterically that a cluster of little old ladies disembarking from a coach at the airport doors had looked at Hope as if she was wearing a sign saying ‘unfit mother.’

True to form, Millie had yelled and cried at full blast for the last hour as her harassed mother read the map, worked out where she was going and made it out past the lunchtime rush in Killarney. Trying not to mow down pedestrians had been the biggest problem. People in Killarney just seemed to walk out in front of the car, not caring that she was a few feet away from them in a deadly piece of all-terrain vehicle with bull bars on the front. Did they look right and left before crossing the road? No, they just threw themselves blithely into the traffic, hopping over puddles and treating the passing cars like nuisances. The Irish were all mad, she decided darkly. She wished Matt had been able to collect them but as the Metro had burst a gasket and was currently languishing in the local garage, it made more sense to rent a car because they’d need transport until the Metro was fixed.

Toby sat quietly in the back, strapped in carefully. Millie, feeling liberated because the car seats were coming later, kept trying to remove her seat belt until Hope had to stop the car and attach her even more firmly. Outraged at being unable to move so freely, Millie decided to roar even more.

Finally, Hope could stand it no longer. The rain had practically stopped and they all needed a bit of fresh air. A

few miles outside Killarney, she stopped the car by a gate at the side of the road, got out and unhooked the children.

It was windy and there was still a fine mist of rain that dampened the children’s hair immediately, but Millie didn’t care. Delighted to be free, she bounced over to the big rusty gate, surprising the herd of muddy black and white cows huddled next to the ditch.

‘Cows,’ she said as happily as if she’d just discovered a herd of rare beasts.

Toby clung to his mother nervously. He wasn’t keen on big animals and when he’d been taken to the zoo, he’d sobbed at the sight of the elephants. Millie, on the other hand, had had to be restrained from clambering up the monkey enclosure, waving her ice cream enticingly.